THERE IS A SEASON

We can’t experience life all at once but, in the right moment, we can – all at once –  gain an understanding of what it’s about.  There is a season for the unfolding of each life chapter, but finding the purpose belongs to each of us, alone.

 

 

 

THERE IS A SEASON

After a couple of days paddling on Lake Superior, it didn’t take long to melt into the seat of my ’92 Voyager.  On the road, the late afternoon canvas of the North was a welcome massage to the aches left over from my weekend.  The rustic beauty of the region, and its contrast with the bustling backcloth of home led me to think of the early settlers, and how their lives are now reduced to little more than stone foundations and a few gray, weathered boards.

 

The rural landscape of Wisconsin is speckled with abandoned farmsteads.  They are the battered remnants of bygone enterprise, and of families and lives that no longer exist – at least as they once did.  In a few more years, even those bits and pieces of history will slip away.  The broken windows and collapsed frames evoked a nostalgia that left me pondering the forces of nature and my own ability to endure.  I wondered about ideas of permanence and if all industry isn’t futile.

 

Seeing those relics and thinking about their storied past brought a feeling of sadness.  Why wouldn’t it?  The energy that goes into a life is abstract and intangible, born of our spirit, more than the earth.  And when the earth reclaims what is hers . . . as she always will, we can feel defeated.  Our sense of loss relates to the view that we’ve created; a view that can hide the true meaning of what and who we are.

 

We like to think of our lives in postcard images, the way fieldstone and timber give focus to a painting that portrays a home.  But the material aspects that surround us have their own ‘lives’ to lead.  In the long view, walls and rafters make only a slight detour on our behalf.  Soon enough, they return to their own destiny, leaving us with ours.  So then, if we are not much more than energy, what matters . . . except how we use it in the space and time we have?

 

Home in the driveway, my time on the water, and the sense of freedom it always provides, was beginning to fade.  Then, as I lifted the kayak off the van, I remembered the paddle’s weight in my hands . . . I saw the trail of water dripping off the blade on the return stroke, and felt the ripples going forth . . .  That’s what I could count on.  It’s the energy we spend during our lives that is eternal, not the forms or the framework.  No easy lesson, but in terms of the foundations of life, one worth building upon.